"In his History of the
Inquisition, Canon Llorente, who was the Secretary to the
Inquisition in Madrid from 1790-92 and had access to the
archives of all the tribunals, estimated that in Spain alone
the number of condemned exceeded 3 million, with about
300,000 burned at the stake." (Dave Hunt, A
Woman Rides the Beast, page 79, also 242)

When called on this in a recent issue of
his newsletter, Hunt responds:

"I relied upon a secondary
source that said Llorente cited 300,000 deaths in the Spanish
Inquisition. Other sources say 30,000. The apparent
discrepancy could be explained by Llorente on one occasion
giving figures for Spain and on another for Europe -- or
including those who, though not burned at the stake, were
martyred in other ways....Instead of trying to discredit my
figures, these critics ought rather to admit that the Spanish
Inquisition swallowed up far more than 300,000, whether
Llorente said it or not....

"They are trying to disprove
that accusation, but history affirms it and I will stand by
it. The truth is that there is no other institution,
government, organization or entity in history that even comes
close to the Roman Catholic Church's slaughter of the saints!

"The horror of the Inquisition
is beyond recital. Why, then, don't the Roman Catholic
apologists acknowledge that horror, confess their shame and
call upon their Church to repent of its centuries of
unspeakable crimes against humanity!

"Yes, we can attribute millions
of deaths of true Christians to Roman Catholicism and the
popes down through the centuries. No other entity in history
comes close to being drunk with the blood of the saints, and
that description absolutely fits the Roman Catholic
Church!"

(Dave Hunt, The Berean
Call newsletter, June 1998)

All right, Dave Hunt, now back to
reality and the facts. You know, those facts you talked about in
the introduction to your 1994 book on end-times speculation that
the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon, A Woman
Rides the Beast [hereafter AWRTB]
(Harvest House, 1994), page 10-11

"The purpose of this book is to
present vital, factual information...The vast majority of
both Catholics and Protestants are ignorant of the pertinent
facts. It is our hope and prayer that the following pages
will help to clarify the issues and dispel the
confusion."

If there are issues to be clarified and
confusion to be dispelled, it certainly won't be remedied by any
perusal of writings from Fundamentalist Dispensationalist author
Dave Hunt, whose books seek to bash Catholicism rather than
provide a factual account of anything. This is particularly true
of Hunt's wild claims on the subject of the Inquisition, since
Hunt relies on extremely biased and unreliable sources (e.g.
Fox's Book of Martyrs, ex-priest Peter DeRosa, Canon Llorente,
etc).

Note: this is not meant as a complete
refutation of his comments on the "Inquisition" (e.g. AWRTB
chapter 17, "Blood of the Martyrs"); for that, the book
by Medieval church historian Edward Peters Inquisition
(1988) does the job nicely, separating "myth" from
history. Hunt's claims on the Albigenses and Waldenses (supposedly true "evangelical"
Christians who were "slaughtered" by the
"millions") have been thoroughly answered by Baptist
historian James Edward McGoldrick and his work Baptist
Successionism (1994) that refutes the "hidden
church" theory.

Let's take Canon Llorente, for example,
who is Hunt's source for the 300,000 figure (or 30,000, the
discrepancy will be dealt with later), which Hunt admits in his
newsletter he lifted from a secondary source (R.W. Thompson, The
Papacy and the Civil Power [orig 1876] from AWRTB
chap 6/note 17, chap 17/note 1) without checking the original
work. Hardly the mark of careful research or scholarship.

While it is true Llorente was the last
Secretary of the Inquisition in Madrid in the late 18th century
who had access to the archives, it is readily conceded that
Llorente was a biased "anti-cleric" whose
"facts" and figures are quite unreliable. It would have
taken Hunt a few hours in a library to discover, as 20th century
scholars of the Spanish Inquisition have noted (see the mostly
non-Catholic sources in the brief bibliography below, books that
have been around for decades) :

"Llorente, the ex-Secretary of
the Holy Office who wrote a bitterly antagonistic account of
it at the beginning of the 19th century, based on manuscript
material which is no longer extant, states that all told,
from its foundation down to 1808, the total number of
heretics burned in person in Spain alone totalled 31,912...
These figures are so enormous as to seem highly
suspicious." (Cecil Roth [orig 1937], page 123)

"[Llorente] came up with the
incredible figures of 31,912 relaxations in person, 17,659
relaxations in effigy, and 291,450 penitents, a grand total
of 341,021 victims. All the historical evidence has shown
this greatly exaggerated figure to be without any
foundation." (Henry Kamen [orig 1965], page 280-1)

"Llorente put the total at
nearly 32,000 [burned in person], but his method of
calculation is fantastic and ridiculous." (A.S.
Turberville [orig 1932], page 112)

From a book of essays by leading
Inquisition historians:

"There can be little doubt,
however, that in light of subsequent research, even by those
more or less sharing Llorente's animus towards the Holy
Office, he can no longer be considered reliable...Clearly,
Llorente also contributed substantially to the growing
anti-clerical tradition in Spain in the 19th century."
(Paul J. Hauben [1969], page 31, from chapter "Juan
Antonio Llorente: A Spanish Anti-Clerical View")

Even Henry Charles Lea, the first major
American Inquisition historian and no fan of the Catholic Church,
says of the calculations of victims:

"There is no question that the
number of these has been greatly exaggerated in popular
belief, an exaggeration to which Llorente has largely
contributed by his absurd method of computation...."
(Lea, volume 4, page 517)

Lea calls Llorente's guess-work
"reckless" and "entirely fallacious."

Before I get to what the real figures
could be, what is this discrepancy between 3 million, 300,000 and
30,000? Hunt's attempt at explaining his mistake notwithstanding,
we all have to admit that the all-powerful Inquisition racked up
and killed far more than 300,000, right?

"Instead of trying to discredit
my figures, these critics ought rather to admit that the
Spanish Inquisition swallowed up far more than 300,000,
whether Llorente said it or not..." (Hunt, TBC,
June/98)

To heck with the facts! 300 million, 300
thousand, 3000, same thing, right?

Sorry, Mr. Hunt, I do not excuse your
laziness in doing the research.

If he had checked the original work of
Juan Antonio Llorente (published in English translation in 1823),
he would have discovered that while the French version
(translated from the Spanish) notes in its preface "three
hundred thousand victims", the actual number who perished in
the flames is listed as 31,912 at the end of the book, with
291,450 persons given severe penances.

The discrepancy is explained by Gabriel
Lovett in his introduction in a 1966 English reprint of
Llorente's book, as follows:

"Llorente's original Spanish
draft may very well have mentioned over 300,000 victims
without indicating that they were all actually burned; or he
may have stated that over 30,000 persons had been burned at
the stake. In that case the French translator of Llorente's
original draft either made a mistake in rendering this
particular sentence of the Spanish clergyman in the preface
or simply wrote 'three hundred thousand' instead of 'thirty
thousand,' and Llorente did not notice the error upon
preparing the final French version for the printer. This
error was corrected in the first Spanish edition of
1822...." (Gabriel Lovett, introduction to Llorente)

Regardless of the discrepancy, Dave Hunt
is clearly incompetent as a researcher when he insists on
defending such numbers as 300,000 or (even worse)
"millions" put to death by the "Inquisition."
It is estimated by modern scholars of the Spanish Inquisition,
for example, that in its entire 356 year history (1478-1834), the
grand total executed range from 3000-6000 persons which, though
not entirely defensible either, is far lower than sensationalist
writers like Dave Hunt would have us believe. Perhaps 50 percent
of those who perished did so in the first 20 years of the
institution, an estimated 2000 (or less) under the Grand
Inquisitor, Torquemada -- though he was not the "cruel
monster" as popular "Inquisition myths" portray
him.

"....the Spanish Inquisition,
in spite of wildly inflated estimates of the numbers of its
victims, acted with considerable restraint in
inflicting the death penalty, far more restraint than was
demonstrated in secular tribunals elsewhere in Europe that
dealt with the same kinds of offenses. The best
estimate is that around 3000 death sentences were carried out
in Spain by Inquisitorial verdict between 1550 and 1800, a
far smaller number than that in comparable secular courts."
(Peters, page 87, emphasis added)

Some data for the later periods are
offered by Oxford scholar, Kamen:

TRIBUNAL

PERIOD

YEARS

RELAXATIONS (burned in
person)

Ciudad Real

1483-1485

2

52

Toledo

1485-1501

16

250

Toledo

1575-1610

35

11

Toledo

1648-1794

146

8

Saragossa

1485-1502

17

124

Valencia

1484-1530

46

754

Barcelona

1488-1498

10

23

Mallorca

1488-1729

241

120

Canaries

1504-1820

316

11

(from Henry Kamen [1985], page 42)

Henry Charles Lea presents the following
figures for Saragossa which "was reckoned as one of the most
deadly tribunals in Spain" from the Libro Verde
de Aragon that gives us an official list of the
residents of Saragossa burnt, year-by-year:

YEAR

NUMBER

YEAR

NUMBER

YEAR

NUMBER

YEAR

NUMBER

YEAR

NUMBER

1483

1

1493

11

1505

1

1526

1

1549

1

1485

4

1494

1

1506

5

1528

2

1561

4

1486

26

1495

9

1510

1

1534

1

1563

1

1487

25

1496

1

1511

5

1535

1

1565

1

1488

13

1497

18

1512

4

1537

1

1566

1

1489

2

1498

2

1520

1

1539

1

1567

2

1490

1

1499

13

1521

2

1542

1

1574

2

1491

10

1500

5

1522

1

1543

1

1492

15

1502

2

1524

1

1546

2

(from Henry Charles Lea, volume 4, page
521)

As conclusive proof of the sloppy and
biased computations of Llorente, Lea notes that in the little
tribunal of the Canaries, after 1524 Llorente includes it among
the tribunals by which he multiplies the number of yearly victims
assigned to each. He thus comes up with the outrageous figures of
1,118 relaxations in person and 574 in effigy. However, Millares
(in Historia de la Inquisicion en las Islas Canarias,
III, 164-8) has printed the official list of the -quemados-
during the whole career of the tribunal, and they amount in all
to ELEVEN burnt in person (Lea, volume 4, page
524). So much for Llorente's accuracy.

Even more outlandish are Hunt's claims
about "millions" tortured by the Inquisition. In A
Woman Rides the Beast, our Fundamentalist author
confirms the anti-Catholics' worst suspicions in lurid detail:

"Try to imagine being suddenly
arrested in the middle of the night and taken to an unknown
location kept secret from family and friends. You are not
told the charges against you or the identity of your
accusers, who remain unknown and thus immune from any
examination to discover whether they are telling the truth.
Whatever the accusation, it is accepted as fact and you are
guilty without trial. The only 'trial' will be by the most
ingeniously painful torture that continues until you confess
to that unnamed crime or heresy of which you have been
accused. Imagine the torment of dislocated joints, torn and
seared flesh, internal injuries, broken bones on the rack and
other devices, mended by doctors so they could be torn
asunder again by fresh torture. Eventually you would confess
to anything to end the torment, but no matter what you
confess it never fits the secret accusation, so the torture
continues until at last you expire from the unbearable
trauma." (Hunt, AWRTB, page
250)

Hunt continues, "Such was the fate
of MILLIONS" (emphasis his). And
such nonsense from Dave Hunt's fertile imagination he would like
his readers to swallow, but such is not the case. Torture was
infrequently used, and there is no reference to it in the
documents concerning the origins of the Inquisition, the Italian
inquisitors being the first probably to make use of it (after the
1252 Bull -Ad Exstirpanda- of Innocent
IV), though it was alien to the canonical tradition of the
Church, and was a revival of secular Roman law. The idea of
"millions" tortured and killed is pure fantasy. Edward
Peters gives us a more accurate picture:

"If sufficient evidence
accumulated against an accused who did not confess, the
Inquisition had torture at its disposal, as had
all ecclesiastical and secular courts -- except
in England -- since the 13th century. Although torture as an
incident of legal procedure was permitted only when
sufficient circumstantial evidence existed to indicate that a
confession could be obtained, inquisitorial
torture appears to have been extremely conservative and
infrequently used.

"There is enough inquisitorial
literature on torture contained in -Instrucciones-
intended only for the eyes of inquisitors, for us to conclude
that the Inquisition's use of torture was well
under that of all contemporary secular courts in continental
Europe, and even under that of other ecclesiastical tribunals....

"In a trial before the Spanish
Inquisition, the very fact that the accused had been charged
and arrested at all indicated that sufficient evidence for
guilt had already been accumulated on the basis of
denunciations by others, the testimony of other tried
heretics, evidence from neighbors or local clergy, or
self-incriminating evidence from one's own household. But the
aim of the Inquisition remained penitential rather than
purely judicial."

(Edward Peters, page 92-93, emphasis
added)

An issue of the scholarly Catholic
Dossier magazine (Nov/Dec 1996), edited by Ralph
McInerny, was dedicated to the history and "myths" of
the Inquisition, with articles by noted Catholic historians that
analyzed the work of the most recent Inquisition scholarship,
including a review of a 1994 BBC/A&E documentary "The
Myth of the Spanish Inquisition" which has been replayed on
the History Channel.

James Hitchcock, a professor of history
at St. Louis University, summarizes the conclusions of the best
of modern Inquisition studies:

(1) The inquisitors
tended to be professional legists and bureaucrats who adhered
closely to rules and procedures rather than to whatever personal
feelings they may have had on the subject.

(2) Those rules and
procedures were not in themselves unjust. They required that
evidence be presented, allowed the accused to defend themselves,
and discarded dubious evidence.

(3) Thus in most cases
the verdict was a "just" one in that it seemed to
follow from the evidence.

(4) A number of cases
were dismissed, or the proceedings terminated at some point, when
the inquisitors became convinced that the evidence was not
reliable.

(5) Torture was only
used in a small minority of cases and was allowed only when there
was strong evidence that the defendant was lying. In some
instances there is no evidence of the use of torture.

(6) Only a small
percentage of those convicted were executed -- at most one or two
percent in a given region. Many more were sentenced to life in
prison, but this was often commuted after a few years. The most
common punishment was some form of public penance.

(7) The dreaded Spanish
Inquisition in particular has been grossly exaggerated. It did
not persecute millions of people, as is often claimed, but
approximately 44,000 between 1540 and 1700, of whom less
than two percent were executed.

And so on....

I would ask anyone who has doubts about
the above to check out some of the resources in the following
bibliography, which present different perspectives on the
Inquisition, but the basic facts remain constant.

BIBLIOGRAPHY ON THE
INQUISITION

BOOKS (by publication date, these are the ones I found
in a few hours search at the University of South Florida library)

A Critical History of the
Inquisition of Spain by Juan Antonio Llorente/intro
Gabriel Lovett (orig 1823, 1966)

A History of the Inquisition
of Spain (4 volumes) and other works by Henry
Charles Lea (orig 1906, 1966)

The Inquisition from its
Establishment to the Great Schism by A.L.
Maycock/intro Fr. Ronald Knox (orig 1926, 1969)

History of the Origin and
Establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal by
Alexandre Herculano (orig 1926, 1968)

The Inquisition: A Political
and Military Study of its Establishment by Hoffman
Nickerson/preface Hilaire Belloc (orig 1932, 1968)

The Spanish Inquisition
by A.S. Turberville (orig 1932, 1968)

The Spanish Inquisition
by Cecil Roth (orig 1937, 1964)

The Spanish Inquisition
by Henry Kamen (1965)

The Spanish Inquisition: Its
Rise, Growth, and End (3 books in one) by Jean
Plaidy (The Citadel Press, 1967)

The Spanish Inquisition
edited by Paul J. Hauben, et al (John Wiley and Sons, 1969), a
series of essays by different authors

The Mexican Inquisition of
the Sixteenth Century by Richard E. Greenleaf (Univ
of New Mexico Press, 1969)